


A time to refrain (from embracing)

by s_t_c_s



Series: to everything there is a season [1]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: (angsty) sex dreams, (but not like that ya know), Angst, Canon Typical Awfulness, Did I mention angst, F/M, Non-Consensual Touching, Panic Attacks, Trauma, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, violent imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22776871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_t_c_s/pseuds/s_t_c_s
Summary: Beth keeps on having those bad dreams.
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Series: to everything there is a season [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1703800
Comments: 30
Kudos: 62





	A time to refrain (from embracing)

It’s not real, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

It’s–

Beth’s arms are wrenched behind her, shoulders grating with it. However she fumbles, she can’t get purchase, can’t move free. Her face is rubbing against abrasive material and it’s dark and the breaths aren’t coming right and her face is _wet_ and her make-up must be ruined and–

Time elapses. Perhaps she passed out. The experience ebbs, in that way they do. That horrid panic retreats as Beth sucks in hazardous lungfuls; reality reappears around her edges.

She’s not, and he’s not. _I_ _t’s_ not– She’s in bed, her bare, if sweaty, face slumped on her pillow. Her supposedly comforting terrycloth robe has tangled, half-slipped from her shoulders, capturing and contorting her strangely. The situation is quickly remedied once she’s rolled from her front.

Beth pants, stares into space. Has some water.

It’s almost a new routine.

*

When Rio bashes sideways back into her life, after months of being dead, it’s an understandable shock. But not as surprising as her response. Each one of his words, his _every_ look, sparks virulent, smarting rage within her. Beth’s surrounded, blinded, by a steaming mist – she yearns to spit in his eye, rend Rio’s skin from his skeleton.

Those reactions honestly _terrify_ her. Because she thought she felt dreadful over it, had been suffering with guilt. She shouldn’t wish to provoke and pain him, to carve marks into his meat. She’s not a bad person. But he’s a symbol of everything that has ever been unfair, and infuriatingly nonsensical, in Beth’s life. She’s so lost, confused by his miraculous recovery and the lack of his retributive hands – or gun – on her.

The anger tries its darndest to spill out of her – her fingers twitch with it. But she clutches its heat tight, private. Shows him an obedient mask.

*

The nightmares or tainted memories or cursed astral projections or whatever the _fuck_ they are only get worse. His presence heals nothing, and Beth’s not too sure about that time line either. Could be Rio’s sucked up all the salvation in the universe, left nothing over for her.

Sometimes in the dreams he’s fucking her – his giant hands heavily forcing her hips down into the mattress, unrelenting. Rio spurns her attempts to meet him, taunts with rhetorical questions about what she thinks she deserves. In others they’re kissing, tentative yet eager, and then she _remembers –_ wakes slick with tears.

It’s never, ever both scenarios at once.

*

One night, in the back room of Paper Porcupine, she absolutely loses it with him. In the immediate aftermath she’s already fuzzy on how precisely those numbers riled her to such a lofty position.

Beth’s still stuttering her repeated, accusatory phrase. One of her fingers is honest to god _waggling_ , her other hand gripping her waist so hard she may bruise. She feels flipping absurd, is vaguely aware she resembles a pose from that teapot dance Jane loves. She doesn’t want to be doing it, saying it, but she _cannot make it stop_.

It’s his eyes on her, it must be. Fury flushes, it builds in her heart then journeys outwards, through each nerve. Her teeth grit; her desire to rip into his sinews roars.

Rio’s not actually saying it, but she’s _certain_ he’s thinking it. Despite all his mockery and lording, it’s not really an angle he’s ever worked with her. Not in the before, anyway. And if there’s a man on the goddamn planet she could take an accusation of irrationality or excessive emotionality – even a dreaded _calm down_ – from, surely it’d be the one she shot. But. _But_. Beth acknowledges that she can’t. Because she’ll let ‘em all undervalue and belittle her, play it to her advantage again and again. Rio though, she can’t stand the idea of him not recognising that she’s _here_ , a force to be reckoned with, capable as him.

He’s pointedly unruffled by her outburst. The dying strains of her, “Which is unreasonable, it's unreasonable, _unreasonable_!” earn her nothing more than this aloof, stoic cast that she absolutely cannot deal with. It’s become a familiar foe ever since his, whatever, deal with the devil sponsored reincarnation.

Rio won’t give her much of anything these days – not their familiar back-and-forth, no lulling calm before the storm. He doesn’t shout either, only instructs in a lethargic yet somehow menacing tone. It’s like he came back different, missing pieces.

She can’t understand how he can be so calm, unaffected. Even whole and healthy, with Turner gone, and her acting all cowed. She _knows_ in her heart of hearts that she will not fold for him, unquestioningly follow his every order, but she hasn't tipped him to that - at least not before today.

“I hate you,” Beth hisses.

“Uh huh,” is all she gets for her troubles. He sounds thoroughly disengaged. But is that – a slight eyeroll?

A kernel of a sensation uncomfortably close to empathy balloons in her craw. Because she’s been haunted by it, the bag over her head, the sight of Turner, beaten and bloody. To say nothing of what happened next, what she did. To him. Rio can’t be as truly untouched as he appears, it must cost him something to dally with her, to have convinced himself she won’t pounce.

The words cut from her larynx, rough and unwilling as they are instinctual. Beth regrets them immediately, even without his reaction. She means it from her murky depths, the apology, but– _But_. It’s an insufficient band-aid, pointless. _Insulting_ , even. She could stomach any harsh words to that effect, would recognise the truth of them.

Rio’s answering laughter is bright and huge, potentially without end. It’s not surprised or teasing, or particularly unkind. He just seems – delightedly entertained.

Her hands clench, fist, and she can’t stave the reddening. Rio’s face shifts, maybe that ought to be a welcome sight with how greedy she’s been for genuine reactions, but _boy_ is it not. His eyes flick between calculation and curiosity, before he abandons the bag of money to its surface, prowling for her. It’s just a one-two step, followed by a pause. But she _knows_ it for one, a temporary wait, no final stop.

“Oh,” he says, stretching it out too long, letting his mouth rest in a perfect circle as one brow salutes her. “You missed me?” lilts from him.

When she sneers he only snorts out one of his stupid Mutley sniggers.

“I bet you did.” His lips are lascivious, self-satisfied, his words wrapped with a combativeness she never associated with flirting before she met him. “You do seem awful tense.”

She longs to vomit on his spotless shoes.

Her agony over what happened was _never_ about something so selfish, so stupid. Every time her frantic mind lighted upon the fact that she really _did_ like having sex with him, but she also– Well. Thoughts such as that had been thrust far and fast, averted from like hot potatoes on uncovered fingertips. It’s Marcus, and Rhea, that she’s kept at the forefront, as well as basic moral decency.

Besides, she’s resigned herself to the fact that certain aspects of her life are meant to be tepid. Not as a martyr, but as a realist.

He seems to reach her the very moment he moves again, Rio’s pace speeding past reason. Her fight or flight response kicks in, but it picks instead that detested third option. She’s frozen in place, even as he spins her. One of his hands stays at her hip, the other clutches the top of her shoulder. And Beth _ache_ _s_ to relax into it still – his solid warmth behind, that tricksy familiarity.

She does – just for a _second_. Cos _all_ of him is pressed to her back, his nose is lost in her curls, aiming for naked neck. When she _feels_ his inhale she has to get away. Because she comprehends him; there’s no way this is authentic, or in any way kindly. Or _fair_. It’s a torment, a gimmick, an instrument he’s operating upon her.

She strains to escape him, but it’s no use.

“No,” she says sharp – proud. There’s no plea to it, mere command.

Rio yanks her tighter to him, two-handed. The fingers at her shoulder start creeping forwards. So Beth elbows him hard in the stomach.

He melts from her, yielding as wind chimes. Rio’s cracking out laughs, they whip through her ear canals, sear at the delicate flesh.

And she is _past_ furious, which surely must show on her face when she whips around, intending to – yell so hard it drums up a cyclone capable of carrying him beyond her reach, perhaps.

So she can’t fathom what the hell is dancing around his eyes when he considers her, leaning down just a little. Nor what he means when he practically tuts out, “Oh, baby.” He’s not dismissive, not quite chiding, and certainly there’s nothing apologetic to him, but it sits close to disappointed. As well as too, _too_ amused, as evidenced by that violent smirk.

He must infer something – tragic and private – from her expression. Stuff she would never want him to glean. But she’s hopeless, at a total loss, because she’s not sure she has any idea what that might be.

“Oh dear,” he adds, a scorning purr as his head shakes in an approximation of a person who understands sympathy. Barely repressed mirth shakes at his back, as she watches him head back to the duffel.

Then he’s striding off, unhurried, and she’s left alone in the back room – messy and hollow.

*

It seeps into her dreams too, of course, if that’s what they are. He’s scrunched against her, maintaining an acute hold. She’s murmuring, gibbering really, agreements, rutting back at him. And Rio won’t stop laughing – deriding her for desiring him still, so nakedly and with such banal desperation; for assuming she deserves – escape or pleasure or any piece of him once more.

These might be the worst ones yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season) by Pete Seeger.


End file.
